Film: Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl

(Joan Chen, 1998) After the story Celestial Bath from the anthology White Snake and Other Stories by the Chinese writer and festival guest Geling Yan. The film is based on her own life story and is set in the People's Republic of China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1970s. In this era many people were sent from the towns to the countryside in order to revise their knowledge of Maoist communism. Tailor daughter Xiu Xiu, a sixteen year old, ends up in the Tibetan highland in order to learn the trade of horse tamer. She bides her time, but when she returns she is not yet free from the Chinese authorities. The film was made in Tibet without permission by the Chinese government. Subtitles in Dutch.